Report on the Fifth PANDA Symposium on “Anesthesia and Neurodevelopment in Children.”

On April 16 and 17, 2016, the Pediatric Anesthesia and NeuroDevelopment Assessment (PANDA) study held its fifth biennial symposium at the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York. Since April 2014 when the fourth symposium was held, the awareness of the potential issue of anesthetic neurotoxicity within both the medical community and in the lay public has continued to increase.1The PANDA symposium has served as a key forum for clinicians, researchers, and other major stakeholders to gather and review the current state of preclinical and clinical research related to anesthetic neurotoxicity in children. Goals of the meeting included assessing how current knowledge has translated and impacted clinical care of patients who may be at risk, and future directions for research and policy. Recognizing the growing body of work and issues in the area of pediatric anesthetic neurotoxicity, this year’s PANDA symposium program was expanded from 1 to 2 days. This permitted a wider breadth and greater detail of presentations and discussions. The program participants represented a diverse group with a shared concern of potential anesthetic neurotoxicity in children. It included clinicians, preclinical and clinical researchers as well as representatives from government organizations (FDA [Food and Drug Administration] and National Institutes of Health). A total of 135 attended the symposium. They came from over a dozen institutions in the United States as well as attendees from Canada, China, Switzerland, and Italy. As in past years the symposium was organized by the PANDA study team and cosponsored by the New York-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and the Department of Anesthesiology of Columbia University, and the expanded program was made possible by the support of SmartTots.